Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The Red planet has had a
special attraction for humanity ~ Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and
the second smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the
Roman god of war, it is often referred to as the "Red Planet" because
the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. The
rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of
Earth, as is the tilt that produces the seasons. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which
are small and irregularly shaped.

Mars One—a controversial
project that aims to send humans on a one-way trip to the Red Planet by 2023—
immediately garnered interest from
202,586 people from more than 140 countries who sent in video applications. Even if the mission overcomes a host of
currently insurmountable problems including cosmic radiation, designing a
sufficiently powerful spaceship and securing TV rights, nobody who makes it
aboard would ever be able to come back down to Earth - and would die on Mars.
Despite that drawback, applications flowed in is astounding.

Back home, there was reason
to celebrate as 24th Sept was the First birthday of India's MOM
(Mars Orbiter Mission), proudly known as Mangalyaan! The space probe entered
the Mars orbit on 24 September 2014, almost a year after its launch, and made
its home around the Red Planet. On that day last year ISRO's Mars mission was
the pride of entire India as it was only the fourth space agency to reach Mars,
after the Soviet space program, Nasa, and the European Space Agency. India
became the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit, and the first nation in the
world to do so in its first attempt. The Nation’s joy knew no bounds when it successfully entered the
orbit of the Red planet on 24th Sept 2014. The spacecraft entered into an
elliptical orbit around Mars. After its successful entry, ISRO’s Mars
Orbiter sent pictures of Phobos — the largest of the two natural satellites
that orbit around Mars.

Now
there is more to read about Mars. Potentially
life-giving water still flows across the ancient surface of Mars from time to
time, NASA scientists said Monday in revealing a potential breakthrough in both
the search for life beyond Earth and human hopes to one day travel there. While
the discovery doesn't by itself offer evidence of life on Mars, either past or
present, it does boost hopes that the harsh landscape still offers some refuge
for microbes to cling to existence.

"The
existence of liquid water, even if it is super salty briny water, gives the
possibility that if there's life on Mars, that we have a way to describe how it
might survive," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the
Science Mission Directorate at NASA. NASA says it found proof of water in dark
streaks called recurring slope lineae, on the walls of the Garni Crater on
Mars. NASA researchers using an imager
aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter confirmed the watery flows by looking at
light waves returned from seasonal dark streaks on the surface, long suspected
to be associated with liquid water.

The
investigation showed the streaks absorb light at specific wavelengths
associated with chemicals known to pull water from the Martian atmosphere in a
process known as deliquescence, said Georgia Tech doctoral student Lujendra
Ojha, who first discovered the streaks while still an undergraduate student at
the University of Arizona in 2011. The
chemicals allow the water to remain liquid at lower temperatures but also help
keep it from boiling off in the thin atmosphere of Mars, the researchers said. “Our
quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the
universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long
suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development,
as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the
surface of Mars.”

Ojha
and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated
minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the
chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium
chlorate and sodium perchlorate. Some perchlorates have been shown to keep
liquids from freezing even when conditions are as cold as minus 94 degrees
Fahrenheit (minus 70 Celsius). On Earth, naturally produced perchlorates are
concentrated in deserts, and some types of perchlorates can be used as rocket
propellant.

The
discovery of water in Mars is the latest
of many breakthroughs by NASA’s Mars missions ~and offers lot of hope for the
researchers.